Dimension 8400 - How to get 3th GB recognized?

I have a Dimension 8400 that I finally dropped 4gb into just cause I had it sitting around…the bios recognizes the 4gb but to eliminate any issues I upgraded it from A03 to the most recent version A09. I installed the PAE kernel…when that didn’t work I custom compiled a kernel making sure to turn 4GB himem on as well as my normal desktop changes (low latency desktop and 1000hz clock instead of 250)…the system continues to only recognize 3.2gb.

My two questions are:

  1. What am I missing in the list of things to do to enable the 4th gb…I understand my system is 32 bit…I understand the PAE kernel is supposed to allow either 4-8GB or up to 64GB depending on what options you set in kernel config.

  2. What swap file should you use with 4GB? My main 64bit machine with 8GB created a 2GB swap but it only had 6GB of memory installed when it did that.

I’ve currently got Opensuse 11.2 Milestone 1 KDE CD running on the dimension 8400 (running = installed in this case)…

Thanks for your time.

famewolf wrote:

> I have a Dimension 8400 that I finally dropped 4gb into just cause I had
> it sitting around…the bios recognizes the 4gb but to eliminate any
> issues I upgraded it from A03 to the most recent version A09. I
> installed the PAE kernel…when that didn’t work

openSUSE PAE kernel should have done the trick.

> I custom compiled a
> kernel making sure to turn 4GB himem on as well as my normal desktop
> changes (low latency desktop and 1000hz clock instead of 250)…the
> system continues to only recognize 3.2gb.
>
> My two questions are:
>
> 1) What am I missing in the list of things to do to enable the 4th
> gb…I understand my system is 32 bit…I understand the PAE kernel is
> supposed to allow either 4-8GB or up to 64GB depending on what options
> you set in kernel config.

Yes, PAE kernel allows 32 bits OS to see up to 64 GB. ram. May be you are
stuck by some kind of specific chipset or BIOS limitation, I dunno.

> 2) What swap file should you use with 4GB? My main 64bit machine with
> 8GB created a 2GB swap but it only had 6GB of memory installed when it
> did that.

1 or 2 GB is o.k. If you hibernate the machine, I think you need a swap
partition at least as bigger as your ram (4 GB).

> I’ve currently got Opensuse 11.2 Milestone 1 KDE CD running on the
> dimension 8400 (running = installed in this case)…

In that case (running factory) you should file a bugzilla. Could be a
software issue.

Greetings,


Camaleón